


as if there had been a ceremony

by whitchry9



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [4]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Chronic Pain, Gen, POV Second Person, Pain, References to Thoughts of Suicide, not gonna lie this one got kinda dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-19 18:35:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19138375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitchry9/pseuds/whitchry9
Summary: The pain scale goes from zero to ten. Most days Matt sits around a three, if he's lucky.





	as if there had been a ceremony

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt- chronic pain
> 
> Title is from the poem 'Pain' by Linda Pastan
> 
> More faithful  
> than lover or husband  
> it cleaves to you,  
> calling itself by your name  
> as if there had been a ceremony.
> 
> Full poem here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=33996

Three. Tolerable.

Where you sit most days, if you’re lucky, and don’t push yourself too far. Of course, those days are becoming less likely. Years of throwing yourself off rooftops has not been kind to your body.

You don’t need to smell the rain to know it’s coming anymore, the knee you’ve dislocated so many times that you can pop it back in yourself starts a staccato rhythm before it storms, every time, without fail. You could almost use it as a party trick, if you wouldn’t have to explain so much.

You can imagine it. _Oh this? Old football injury. College, you know how it is._ Make no mind that everyone who’s met you knows you’ve been blind since the age of nine, so unless you were in college before that, or they let you run around the field blindly, there’s something untrue about that story.

Makes it useful to knowing when to take an umbrella though, so you have at least one thing going for you.

 

* * *

 

 

Nine. Excruciating.

On those days, you’d honestly rather die, but can’t bring yourself to do anything about it. You think if you had any more energy, you would have.

(You’re not sure if that’s a blessing or a curse.)

Like most things, it probably just _is._

 

* * *

 

One. Very Mild.

Every time a day like this comes along, you’re desperate to use it all, spend every second doing something that you can’t do when it’s higher than a three, which is most days now. Getting groceries, walking to work, sitting in your chair without your back protesting after only seconds. 

It almost seems a waste to spend these doing mundane things, you feel like you should be running through the streets with joy, proclaiming to everyone who can hear that you’re fine. It barely hurts.

But a part of you is terrified that if you spend these days _wrong,_ if you misuse them, then maybe you won’t get them anymore. Like your pain is some sort of penance.

(You would believe it too. You know the shit you’ve done, the people you’ve hurt. Your hands are filthy with it. You deserve this pain.)

So you cram life into the moments where it’s not unbearable, but not too much, just in case you never get any more. Just in case your body, or something else, decides to punish you for how you’ve spent it. Overspent it. (The bank policy on pain is cruel.)

 

* * *

 

Seven. Very intense.

It’s not worth going to work when you’re like this. You can’t think clearly at this point. You can barely walk most of the time. You’re liable to stumble into the street, get hit by a car. Wouldn’t that be just great. The paramedics would ask you what hurt, and you would say _everything,_ they’d ask you to rate it, and you would lose count on the way there.

You mostly stay home on those days, swallow painkillers dry, focusing on the chalky texture in your mouth until it fades to something you can tolerate.

 

* * *

 

Four. Distressing.

On the chart your doctor gave to you, this pain is supposed to start as piercing, but become dull, like your body can only interpret sharpness for so long before it gets exhausted of it. That’s never made a whole lot of sense to you, since your pain is as stubborn as you are, maybe even more so, since it has been the last one standing more times than you have. Pain doesn’t get tired, doesn’t get worn down. It can be beaten off with painkillers, but even those are only a temporary measure, and it always returns home, sometimes ashamed of the fight you had earlier, but other times, affronted that you had the audacity to throw it out because of its shitty behaviour, determined to redoubled its efforts to beat you down.

It’s the worst roommate you’ve had, and you lived with _Foggy._

 

* * *

 

Ten. Unimaginable.

You haven’t been conscious for this. Your doctor tells you that very few people have ever experienced this and remained conscious. You’re not sure if you should be insulted that you’re not among them, or lucky you haven’t had to be.

 

* * *

 

Five. Very distressing.

You’re almost disappointed in the numbers where they simply add a modifier. The English language is full of words. Surely they could find at least ten of them to describe pain. ‘Very’ does not encapsulate how a five feels. From a four to a five is not simply ‘very’. There is no value that can be added to equal ‘very’.

Maybe the pain makes you bitter. It probably does. You’d be the first to admit it. Pain contorts you, in body and mind, twists you into a person you don’t want to recognize. Pain makes you ugly.

 

* * *

 

Two. Discomfort.

These are the days you have no misconceptions about where you’re going. On days you’re at a one, you have hope. But two? Two is just enough that you can’t fool yourself, just present enough that you can't forget for longer than an instant, the pain reminding you every time you move, breathe, shift. You know it can get better, but it probably won’t, that you’re probably just going downhill for the rest of your life, and if you’re lucky, the slope will be gentle.

(You’ve never really been lucky in your life, and you think that one day you will wake up to find the hill is a cliff that you’ve fallen off of. It’s only a matter of when you’ll hit the bottom, and if that will kill you or not.)

 

* * *

 

Eight. Horrible.

It’s not bad enough to make you want to die, which is good, because you usually still have the energy where you could do something about it.

Maybe it should frighten you more, but you’ve made your peace with death. You have no illusions about where you’re going after, but there’s something shameful and ugly about it being at your own hand. Ungodly.

And maybe you’re not exactly holy, but you still pray that you could be, even as you clasp together blood soaked hands.

(They’re clean. They have to be. You’ve washed them more times than you can count. The blood on them now is just metaphorical. _Now._ )

 

* * *

 

Zero. None.

When you’re asleep, if you’re lucky.

When you’re dead, if it ever comes to that.

(You hope that one day, it does. That you can rest.)

 

* * *

 

Six. Intense.

You’re told this is what most people describe as ‘blinding pain’, but fortunately, all the pains are blinding to you. Your doctor does not find this funny.

You drag yourself to work on these days, usually after swallowing too many aspirin. The heavy meds are saved for days worse than these, a logic you question every time you’re in the midst of one. You always make it to the end though. It’s not like you have many other choices.

 

(In the dark, _the dark,_ when it hurts at night, when you still hear the screams and sirens but know you can’t do anything about it, know that you’ve already done all you can, and paid the price, continue to pay the price, you wonder if that’s really true.)


End file.
